Tag: braddock

High anxiety days as of late. Took a walk in Braddock this afternoon to catch some relief and found this discarded big screen on Washington Avenue near the Monongahela River. I remember when these were new. I worked as a stock clerk at Sears at the time, after dropping out of high school, and we used to uncrate these…

“That’s sad, isn’t it?” a woman says, watching me peer through the window of an abandoned storefront on Braddock Avenue. The doors, wreathed in gold, are partially open with an old chain holding them together. The smell of dust and mildew is strong in the air, wafting from the crack in the door as if the building let out a…

Pictured above is an abandoned house on Talbot Avenue in Braddock, PA, photographed by Sean Hemmerle. I have a work space in Braddock and usually drive down Talbot Avenue once or twice a week. It’s off the beaten path, close to the bank of the Monongahela River. Though Braddock is a favorite location for photographers snapping shots of urban decay,…

Talk about Braddock, Pennsylvania today and it’s a foregone conclusion that the town is a shell of its former self — both in economic terms and its physical landscape. Look back at these photographs collected as part of LBJ’s Model Cities Program (an element of his Great Society initiative), however, and the seeds of decline are evident as far back…

A month or so back, for example, I unearthed a copy of The Soul of America (1986) — Esquire’s state-by-state look at life in 1980s America. A Ken Kesey essay on rodeo culture in Kansas is what prompted me to buy the book, but after paging through the table of contents some more, I discovered a story written by Lynn Darling titled “True Blue.”

Last year, when Levi’s launched its ‘Go Forth’ advertising campaign, it was greeted with less-than-favorable reactions from around the Internet (see here, here, and here). Critiques ranged from claims the campaign was racist (print ads featured mostly white men and women) and depicted misplaced interpretations of freedom, to it being hopelessly vague in its themes of hard work and youthful…

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About the Author

Matthew Newton is a writer and editor from Western Pennsylvania whose work is focused on place and identity. He has written essays, many about class and culture, for Guernica, The Oxford American, and The Rumpus, and his reporting has appeared in The Atlantic, Esquire, Forbes, and Spin. Read more